The Natural Course of Things
by volley
Summary: Added scene to the episode The Breach. After returning to Enterprise Malcolms lands in Sickbay, where he unwillingly acts as a soundboard for Phlox.


Grateful thanks to my beta RoaringMice and to asearcher, whose recent story on Phlox's feelings during The Breach inspired me to write this.

* * *

"Ouch!"

Travis's face scrunched up in pain as Phlox gently moved his leg the better to examine it.

"Easy, Ensign," the doctor said.

His tone was darker than usual, and Malcolm watched with a certain trepidation as Phlox passed his scanner over the young man's ankle. After all, it had been his bloody slip that had caused Travis's injury. Just for a change, he felt responsible.

"Torn ligament," Phlox pronounced not long afterwards, confirming Trip's earlier diagnosis. He emptied a hypospray of painkiller into his patient's bloodstream; then nodded to a couple of medics who were waiting just outside Shuttlepod Two's open hatch, and they helped Mayweather out of the vessel and onto a stretcher. The group left for Sickbay and Phlox turned to the people still inside the pod. "Anyone else in need of medical treatment?"

His voice was still lacklustre - not what Malcolm expected from the usually cheerful man, especially since the "anyone else" included three geologists his fellow Denobulans. Phlox should be glad to have them on board.

"We're fine," Yolen, the senior of the scientists, tersely replied.

That made two of them. But Malcolm knew why Yolen and his colleagues weren't in the best of moods. They had resented having been forced to leave the caves on Xantoras with their wealth of rare speleothems, even though staying there would have defied the orders of the planet's Government and endangered their lives. Trip had been obliged to bare his teeth in order to get the geologists to abandon their research.

"We're okay too, Doc, thanks," the very man echoed, after exchanging a glance with Malcolm.

Phlox's mouth curved slightly upwards, in what wasn't really a smile so much as a curteous acknowledgement. Without another word, the doctor left, and Malcolm watched him walk out of the launchbay, wondering what was wrong with _him_ – if anything.

The familiar sound of rocks inside plastic boxes shook him out of his pensive mood. He exchanged another, rather meaningful glance with Trip, and they turned to the back of the pod, where Zepht, Yolen and Trevix were engrossed in their precious finds, oblivious to the two Starfleet officers and their critical stares.

"Bloody hell," Malcolm said under his breath, for Trip's ears only, "I can't believe we risked our lives to bring back these grousers and their pile of rocks."

"They're lucky nothin' more serious than a torn ligament happened to us," Trip replied in the same low voice, "or I'd have their scalps."

"A barbarous sentiment," an equally soft, unmistakable voice commented.

T'Pol was standing at the hatch. She lifted a foot and in a swift, supple movement boarded the vessel. Her eyes ran over the two of them for a moment, making Malcolm self-conscious of his far from pristine appearance. Both he and Trip were dirty, dishevelled and in dire need of a close encounter with water and soap.

After what felt like ages, T'Pol turned her attention to the Denobulans. "Welcome to the Enterprise," she said, loud enough to catch their attention.

Almost startled, the geologists stared at the new arrival, still not abandoning their rather standoffish expression.

"I am Subcommander T'Pol," Enterprise's SIC continued. "Captain Archer has sent me to show you to guest quarters. He is expecting you in his ready room as soon as you will have settled."

"Very well," Yolen said after a beat. His eyes tracked to the bags and boxes scattered in the back of the pod. "We'll need to carry our speleothems with us. Commander, Lieutenant, maybe you can—"

"I'm afraid we have slightly more important duties than lugging your rocks around," Trip cut him off with an icy look.

Malcolm smiled inwardly. He had seen a new, testy side of the usually genial man today, but he couldn't say he had minded. Indeed, he had admired Trip's handling of the situation. It could have turned pretty bad down there for them, had Trip not showed his gritty side.

"Are we free to go, Ma'am?" the engineer dutifully asked their Superior.

T'Pol's nose wrinkled. "Dismissed," she said, obviously relieved to have two smelly Humans remove themselves from her presence in such a confined environment.

"I shall have a couple of crewmen help you," Malcolm heard her say to the Denobulans, as he and Trip exited the pod.

"And may you and your rocks go in peace," Trip commented under his breath.

To which Malcolm echoed, "Amen."

* * *

"Have you noticed anything wrong with Phlox?" Malcolm asked Trip as they walked down the corridor towards the turbolift.

"Wrong?" Trip puzzled, shooting him a sidelong glance.

Malcolm shrugged. "He seemed... not his usual bouncy self."

"Really?" Trip's mouth curved downward. "I guess I'm still too wound up to notice things." He shook his head. "It's a miracle we're not corpses at the bottom of some cave, impaled on those beautiful speleothems."

"Yeah," Malcolm huffed out mirthlessly.

Trip's face, he suddenly realised, was etched with the tiredness and tension of the past few hours. Being the officer in charge of the Away Team, he had carried the heaviest burden of worry and responsibility. Malcolm passed a hand through his hair, suddenly haunted by the memory of the dreadful moments when his and his friend's lives had been hanging at the end of a rope that was relentlessly slipping out of Travis's hands.

He slowed down. "I'm sorry I lost my footing down there. I was bloody inept," he said, grimacing.

"Nah," Trip dismissed with his customary good-naturedness. "Don't start beating yourself up over it, Malcolm, it wasn't you fault. You and I just weren't prepared for that kind of climbing."

That was quite true. Malcolm took a breath to reply, and a blade went right through his back. With a hiss of pain, he stopped and sought the support of the bulkhead.

"What?" Trip asked in concern.

"Nothing," Malcolm grunted. He tried to straighten up, but another stab sent him right back into his bent position.

"Yeah. I can see that," Trip said deadpan. "Come on. Sickbay isn't far. You must've strained something in your back."

"Brilliant," Malcolm groaned. Why did bad things always happen to him?

* * *

A medic had helped Malcolm onto a biobed and given him a dose of painkiller, and now that the medication had taken effect and he was no longer frozen into that ridiculous position, Malcolm was already seeing his "injury" under a different light. Maybe he could make a silent escape from Sickbay before Phlox appeared. It was no secret this aseptic environment had never been his favourite, and he didn't even have the company of Trip, for he had taken pity on his tired friend and insisted that Trip go get some well deserved rest.

He was warily starting to push to a sitting position, when there was the sound of a privacy curtain being drawn. Too late. As Phlox exited the enclosure around Travis's biobed, Malcolm relaxed back onto his own.

"Lieutenant," Phlox said, in mild surprise.

Malcolm smirked. "I have just recently found out that falling down rockfaces doesn't much agree with my back."

Phlox gave a smile like the one in the Shuttlepod, so very unlike the one that was his trademark.

"Not that it agrees with many physiologies," he commented, approaching.

"From what I've seen, Denobulans don't have that problem." Malcolm shifted a little, grimacing when, painkiller notwithstanding, a dull ache radiated from a leftish spot in his lower back. "It appears you can go up and down walls like bloody Sulibans."

Phlox didn't comment. He had retrieved his medical scanner from a pocket and the instrument was already hovering over his patient's midsection. "Lie still, Mister Reed," he instructed. After a long moment, his bue eyes shifted to Malcolm's face. "You have strained a muscle or two. Painkillers and bedrest will set you right again." He pocketed his scanner. "But first a massage with Draylax Fethsnut ointment. Let me help you remove your-"

"Can't I just go to my quarters and sleep it off?" Malcolm ranted. His instincts, as a Security Officer, were all against offering his back to someone – _anyone_, even for a massage.

Phlox's eyebrows lifted and Malcolm immediately regretted his frustrated outburst. He was being childish and also a bit unfair. He doubted anyone who took a good look at the doctor's hefty hands would readily like to test his skills as a masseur, but Phlox was a competent physician and would know what was best for him.

"I'll help you take off your uniform," Phlox insisted, unperturbed.

And so it was that ten minutes later, Malcolm was himself surrounded by a privacy curtain, lying face-down on a biobed, with a cushion under his midsection, covered only from his butt down by a thin sheet. At least Phlox's ministrations this time didn't involve any sticky invertebrate creature, he mused, seeking some comfort in the notion.

"How is Travis?" he asked, as he tried to chase away the self-consciousness he always felt in this kind of situation.

"Sleeping. He will be fine," was the curt reply.

Phlox opened a jar and a rather pleasant scent drifted in the air. He rubbed a bit of the substance it contained on his palms; then walked to one side of the biobed and started working on Malcolm's back, pressing his thumbs on his spine and sliding his hands up and out in a round motion, applying just enough pressure to do the job without hurting his patient.

"Let me know if you feel any pain," he said.

Malcolm replied with a grunt, too tired to form words. The massage was starting to feel good, actually, and he began to relax. Face turned to one side over his crossed arms, he closed his eyes as a feeling of warmth spread across his back.

A few minutes went by in blissful silence. He'd never known Phlox to be this quiet, but as for himself, he liked silence. He had been taught to appreciate it. Noise and clutter were not tolerated in the Reed household.

The tension of the mission had left room to exhaustion. Malcolm felt himself drift off, and he gladly would have, were it not for a tiny seed of doubt that he couldn't dismiss, a gut feeling that had started in the launchbay and was nagging him. In the end, his professional self had the better of his exhausted one.

"Is everything okay, Doctor?" he asked. "You're being awfully quiet."

Phlox didn't answer right away, which told Malcolm his misgivings were somewhat founded. Lifting his head, he twisted his neck to cast a look at the physician, who briefly met his gaze.

"I've had... a taxing day," Phlox replied.

"Tell me about it," Malcolm breathed out, collapsing back to his original position.

Either Phlox didn't know that turn of phrase or he chose to take the words at face value, for he went on to explain, his voice shrouded in something more than tiredness, "I had to try and save the life of someone who would have rather died than have me as his doctor."

Malcolm cast another quick glance back, but this time it wasn't acknowledged. "What happened?" he enquired, his curiosity piqued. "I heard there was trouble with a transport carrying offworlders away from the planet."

Phlox sighed. He reached for the jar again, and rubbed some more of the oily substance on his hands.

"One of them was an Antaran," he said flatly, returning to his job. "Antarans and Denobulans have been enemies for a long time. Prejudice and war have stood between our two species for centuries."

"What was wrong with the man?"

"Radiation poisoning."

Had Phlox lost a patient? Maybe that was what weighed on the man's conscience. "Did you manage to save his life?" Malcolm asked warily.

Phlox sighed. "Yes. In the end we came to some kind of understanding," he replied, and once again there was no real joy in the words.

Whether he had meant it in the first place or had been distracted by the talking, the doctor was now giving Malcolm's back a full massage. His hands had climbed up Malcolm's spine and were presently on his shoulders, and Malcolm had to restrain a groan of pleasure as they worked the hard tension knots there.

"The credit, really, must go to Captain Archer," Phlox unexpectedly went on, with a pensive sigh. "He threatened to throw me in the brig if I didn't disregard my Denobulan ethical code, which holds a patient's will sacred, and didn't find a way to save that man's life."

"That sounds just like the Captain," Malcolm commented, but his mind was busy wondering why Phlox's voice was so… _doleful_ if everything had ended up for the better. Unless... "Does that bother you?" he dared. "The fact that you had to go against your ethical code, I mean."

"But I didn't. I convinced the man to let himself be treated. I'm glad I saved a life."

"Well, you don't sound it," Malcolm couldn't refrain from blurting out.

Phlox's hands paused over Malcolm's back.

"This incident has… reopened an old wound."

There was such an emotional charge in Phlox's voice that Malcolm gingerly turned on his side to take a good look at him. To his surprise the doctor didn't stop him. He seemed lost in his thoughts.

"Something between me and my son Mettus."

Malcolm knew precious little about the man's life, other than he had three wives – one of whom, incidentally, had tried to seduce their Chief Engineer – and an inordinate amount of children and relatives. Since the beginning of their mission, Phlox hadn't been particularly forthcoming with information about himself, not that Malcolm couldn't understand. But he knew full well how painful old wounds could be – physical _and_ emotional.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Coming out of his distraction, Phlox gently pushed his patient back on his belly and silently resumed the massage.

Malcolm didn't want to appear nosy, so he abandoned himself again to the doctor's ministrations, fatigue making his eyelids droop closed. His mind went to his own strained relationship with his old man. The rift between them wasn't quite as bad – after all, they did exchange a few stilted words from time to time – but it was still a gulf that neither of them went out of their way to bridge. They were both stubborn individuals.

"It is almost physiological for fathers and sons to disagree on things at a certain stage," he drawled. Phlox's hands stopped again, and Malcolm went on, embittered by his own experience, "Sometimes parents ask too much of their children. Treat them as their own possessions."

"Sometimes children are presumptuous enough to think they always know better," Phlox countered. "Age doesn't necessarily make one wise – or stupid, for that matter – but experience surely must count for something."

As silence fell again and the massage resumed, Malcolm told himself to shut up. Considering the likelihood of how often he might need the ship's doctor's professional help in his line of work, he didn't _really_ want to upset the man by telling him what he thought of a father's ingerence into his son's life.

"Did your father ask too much of you, Lieutenant?"

Damn it.

Malcolm shifted, not because he was uncomfortable but because the question made him fidgety, touching the wrong chords.

"In many ways, yes," he huffed out.

"In what ways, if I may ask?" Phlox enquired, adding as an aside, "You are tensing up, try to relax."

As if it was easy, when his mind went _there_.

Malcolm berated himself. This was all his fault; the one time the talkative Denobulan had been quiet, he had thought it a good idea to ask him what was wrong!

"My father was very strict in our upbringing," he said, accent getting clipped and sharp. "Among the many things he expected of me was a career in the Navy, like he had. It was – is – a source of friction between us."

There was another pause.

"Is it so wrong to dream something for our children?" Phlox then quietly wondered. "To want them to be like us, share our ideals? Is it so sinful to want to be proud of them?"

Malcolm was about to say that his father _should_ be proud of him, and _would_ be, if only the old man weren't so stubborn and blind, but kept that to himself. He had revealed enough of his private life for one evening.

"You put a child into the world," Phlox went on pensively, "and love like you've never loved before. You watch them grow, rejoice in their every conquest, ache for their every tear. And then..." Once again his hands stopped working. "Then one day you look at them and it's as if you're seeing them for the first time. They aren't your children any more, they're their own persons. Once they hung on your every word, now there seems to be nothing you can tell them that will make the slightest bit of difference. That day you realise that your time to teach them anything is over, and that you've wasted some of it because you'd never imagined it would be so short."

"Isn't that just the natural course of things?" Malcolm snorted. "I fail to see why parents take it so hard when children develop their own mind."

Phlox reached for the jar again, but only to screw its lid on. "We're done here, Mister Reed," he muttered.

Malcolm rolled on his side, unhappy with himself. As he pushed to a sitting position, legs dangling off the side of the biobed, he couldn't shrug off the notion that his own time to act as a soundboard for Phlox was over and he had failed, voicing his own egocentric opinions instead of helping the man.

He was handed his clothes, and he started pulling them on, unobtrusively studying the doctor, feeling, by the man's actions, that he might even have offended him. Phlox had turned his back to him, and he was fumbling with the medical supplies on a nearby tray. Suddenly, though, he stopped and raised his head.

"Mettus and I didn't argue because of a career choice," he said, still turned away. "I didn't want him to embrace the values of those of us who still consider the Antarans as monsters to be feared and reviled, who refuse to abandon their prejudices and put a narrow-minded past behind. But nothing I said to him made him change his mind. As a result, we haven't spoken in ten years." He turned, and his blue eyes were deep. "Sometimes the _natural course of things_, as you call it, Lieutenant, can be crooked and painful," he concluded in a veiled voice.

Numbly, Malcolm zipped up his top. In Phlox's disappointment he could see reflected his own father's. He knew it had been painful for his old man to watch him swerve away from family tradition. He knew Admiral Stuart Reed had taken it personally. He also knew that he himself had suffered just as much, feeling rejected.

He cleared his throat. "There is nothing wrong with a father's desire that his son be like him, share his ideals," he said. "But if he doesn't, if he happens to want something different..."

Phlox, who had got busy again, stopped and turned, and Malcolm narrowed his eyes, wishing the doctor had an ointment for another type of pain; one that was causing them both, apparently, quite a bit of suffering. "One wishes to feel accepted, loved even when…"

Phlox's empathic blue eyes softened. "If you had children of your own, Mister Reed, you wouldn't worry about that." A bittersweet smile curved his lips. "Except for a few cases, which I wouldn't hesitate to call pathologic, a parent's love is permanent. Hidden perhaps, but stronger than any incomprehension."

"Well, then my father's is definitely well hidden," Malcolm commented dryly.

He put his legs into his trousers and gingerly slipped off the biobed to pull these on. When he raised his eyes, after zipping them up, he found the doctor looking straight at him.

"What about a son's?" Phlox wondered, and there was an expectant, almost anxious look on his face. "Is a son's love stronger than any incomprehension?"

Malcolm hesitated. He had often asked himself how much love there really was in his relationship with his father. Resentment, on both parts, drowned all other emotions between them. But Phlox was waiting, and here was his chance to make it up to him for before.

"If we didn't care about our parents, I suppose we wouldn't get so mad at them," he said with a shrug. That, at least, was the answer he always gave his own self.

Phlox's smile this time was a little bigger, reaching his eyes.

He accompanied Malcolm to the doors, where he stopped and turned to him. "Bed rest for one day. I'll-"

"_One_ _whole_ _day_?" Malcolm cried out. "What am I supposed to do in bed fo-"

"Bed rest for one day, Lieutenant," Phlox repeated sternly. "I'll be coming to check on you in a few hours, in case you need another dose of painkiller."

Malcolm gave the man a fuming look. "Thank you, Doctor," he said deadpan. He pressed the doors' command and they swished open.

"Thank _you_, Mister Reed."

Phlox's voice had sounded more like the real thing. As he started down the corridor, Malcolm couldn't help but smile.

* * *

Phlox watched his most challenging patient walk away and turned about. Sickbay was silent. The curtain was still drawn around Mayweather's biobed. He went to check on his patient, and found him sleeping quietly.

It had been a difficult day, but not entirely negative. And maybe something good could still come out of it. He walked to his desk and sat down.

"Computer, begin recording. Dear Mettus, I know it's been some time since I've written, and I know chances are slim that you'll respond to this letter. However, something has happened that compels me to try to reach you again. I've had an experience that has opened many old wounds. As painful as it's been, it's also changed something in me. I hope, if you're willing to listen, it might begin to change something in you."

THE END

Any feedback will be welcome!


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